Welcome to the ISCB Community News Blog

This blog collects news, announcements or other information which could be of interest to our ISCB members. We are a group ISCB members who volunteer to populate this blog on a regular basis. In case you want to become an "ISCB-News Reporter" yourself, let us know: contact ISCBDon't repost copyrighted content! The guidelines are:- Include a link to the source page- Include a short summary about the article. You can quote up to ONE paragraph from the original story, but not more- Don't repost an entire articles originating from another source- Never post content without attribution — always include the sourceTo post a news, please use this form.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Catastrophic cuts to life saving biomedical research will continue unless Congress reaches agreement on an alternative approach to deficit reduction that cancels sequestration. According to a new factsheet released today by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the funding capacity of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) could be reduced by more than one-third (37 percent) compared to its 2003 level under the budget plan approved by the House earlier this year.

"Sequestration deals a devastating blow to an enterprise already suffering from underfunding and previous budget cuts, and the impact is being felt in labs and research institutions across the country," said FASEB President Margaret "Kenny" Offermann, MD, PhD. "We've seen critical research scaled back, trainees lose jobs, and senior investigators leave the field. The situation is undermining our prior investment in research. This does not have to happen."

Since 2003, flat-funding, inflation, and $1.7 billion in cuts due to sequestration have reduced NIH's ability to support innovative research. Today, NIH can fund only one in six grants, leaving many excellent research programs without support and risking the U.S.'s role as a leader in biomedical research. "The scientific opportunities to develop new therapies for many diseases are unprecedented but we will not make progress if we keep cutting funding for NIH. It is time for Congress to enact a bipartisan plan that reduces the deficit in a meaningful way and replaces sequestration, once and for all," commented Dr. Offermann.

FASEB is composed of 27 societies with more than 110,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. Our mission is to advance health and welfare by promoting progress and education in biological and biomedical sciences through service to our member societies and collaborative advocacy.

The National Science Foundation is pleased to accept nominations for the 2014 Alan T. Waterman Award. Each year, the Foundation bestows the Waterman Award to recognize the talent, creativity, and influence of a singular young researcher. The award consists of a $1,000,000 grant and a trip for two to Washington, DC, to receive the award. For details about the Waterman Award's history, the nomination procedure and the selection criteria please visit http://www.nsf.gov/od/waterman/waterman.jsp.

Nominees are accepted from any field of science or engineering that NSF supports. Nominations must be submitted electronically using NSF\\\'s FastLane system athttps://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/honawards/index.jsp.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Following the successful launch of the PLOS Computational Biology collection 'Translational Bioinformatics', we are delighted to announce the continued development of this collection with a call for new articles.

The collection, which initially launched in December 2012, reads as book and is intended for use as a reference or tutorial for a graduate level introductory course on the science of translational bioinformatics. As a field, translational bioinformatics is rapidly evolving and our plan is to develop the content of the collection as the field develops. The collection editors Maricel Kann, Associate Editor, and Fran Lewitter, Education Editor, comment:

"We have been very pleased with the reception of the PLOS CB "Translational Bioinformatics" collection. It is being used as a text book in university courses and we have had requests to translate the collection into other languages to make it accessible to a wider audience. We are looking forward to adding chapters to the collection in other areas of translational bioinformatics and welcome your suggestions."

At present, the collection is made up of an introduction by Russ Altman and then 17 chapters, each crafted by leading experts in the field. Each of these 17 chapters focuses on a key topic, ranging from genome-wide association studies to text-mining, and provides a solid introduction for those new to the subject, complete with exercises and answers. Together these form an online reference tool, which, in an exciting new step for the journal, has been made available as an eBook in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats.

We plan to publish new chapters twice-yearly, with the next round of new chapters aimed for February 2014. Articles will stand the best chance of inclusion in this release if they are submitted by 15 September 2013. Articles submitted after this date will be considered for the July 2014 release.

To submit an article: go to http://www.editorialmanager.com/pcompbiol/. Please note that prior to full submission, authors should submit a presubmission inquiry for consideration by the collection editors. We encourage authors to refer to the Author Guidelines, available here.

Friday, September 6, 2013

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announces an international competition to improve the coverage on Wikipedia of any aspect of computational biology. A key component of the ISCB's mission to further the scientific understanding of living systems through computation is to communicate this knowledge to the public at large. Wikipedia has become an important way to communicate all types of science to the public. The ISCB aims to further its mission by increasing the quality of Wikipedia articles about computational biology, and by improving accessibility to this information via Wikipedia. The competition is open to students and trainees at any level either as individuals or as groups.

The prizes provided by ISCB for the best articles submitted will be:

1st prize - $500 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
2nd prize - $250 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.
3rd prize - $150 (USD) and 1 year membership to the ISCB.